


The Mechanic

by SandwichesYumYum



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, For ikkiM, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-02-18 10:48:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2345711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandwichesYumYum/pseuds/SandwichesYumYum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Oil

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ikkiM](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikkiM/gifts).



> I was in chat doing livearting this Saturday night and somebody came up with a prompt (see title) which I ran with. If I could remember precisely who it was, I would gift this to them personally, but I really can't. Sorry about that. So, ladies of chat, I guess this is for you. Note to self: when doing livearting, avoid listening to prompts. It's hella distracting. :)
> 
> My thanks to RoseHeart, who is nowt but amazing for putting up with me at all, and to Nurdles, who may indeed have my biscuits.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own it not.

THE MECHANIC - OIL

There being no-one in the small and somewhat shabby reception area, Jaime decides to go through the blue door behind the desk where a young man had accepted his keys this morning. "Hello?" he calls out, taking in the comparatively cavernous space beyond. The hum of flickering fluorescent bulbs crackles above him and the light flickers. There are only three windows, small and set high up in the walls at the back of the garage, in line with three concrete inspection pits. One of which is still covered by his car.

_Damn._

"Is there anybody here?" He knows he sounds irritated, but he hardly thinks it likely that he will be able to find places in kennels for Honor and Glory at such short notice. _Not this week._ He was told the repairs would be completed today and can well imagine his father's reaction to his failing to attend yet another family get together. Still, it's not all bad, he thinks, as the vision of his sister and her new husband floats through his mind. He pushes it away, as yet unwilling to think of Cersei with anybody but him, even if all hope is gone.

There is the sound of coughing from beneath his car, loud and long. A pile of blankets in the far corner is shaken into life by the noise and an aged red dog with lustrous fur emerges from underneath them, ambling over to look into the inspection pit, her tail wagging in a steady beat. Only then does the dog take any interest in his intrusion, coming over to sniff at his shoes.

Jaime bends down and pats her head. "Not much of a guard dog, are you, old girl?" he mutters, tickling at the soft red curls covering her ears. "I don't suppose you're mending my car?"

There is the clang of a spanner being dropped and a muffled curse. "I'm just finishing up." The voice is husky and low, thick with cold and illness. Jaime can't say he is surprised. He isn't so warm himself and there is a constant, chill breeze coming in from the small, cracked window pane on the right.

Jaime crouches down and contents himself with stroking the dog's hips, moving his hand back to her ears when he notes the slight trembling in her back legs which sometimes afflicts elderly dogs of a certain type.

"It's done." Jaime looks down to see the man emerge from his hiding place. Only now does he note how deep the pits are. A good thing too, he thinks. Not only do the layers of jumpers and scarves swathing him beneath his blue overalls do little to hide the mechanic's vast build, but he is hugely tall. And simply covered in oil.

"I thought the problem was in the gearbox?"

The man stills and looks up at him, his gaze steady. "The slave cylinder, to be precise."

Jaime’s breath pushes hard out through his teeth. He is far too used to his name leading him to be fleeced by those who see him as a path to easy coin. One small cost spiralling as other things, which ‘must’ be done, are miraculously found. He doesn’t care about spending, but he won’t be taken for a fool. Jaime is done with being the fool. He’ll be having sharp words with Tyrion later for recommending this place. "Then why all this talk of gearboxes?"

His frustration must be clear because the mechanic snaps at him, all surliness as he climbs the ladder nearby. "Well, if you will own a car which is designed with the slave cylinder in the gearbox..." He gets to the top and his enormous feet thump across to Jaime. Yet even as he does, a large, oil-stained hand reaches up to clasp at a broad, equally blackened forehead, though whether it is because he is trying to restrain himself or the headache that must surely be accompanying the wheeze in his chest is hard to say. "In any case, some of the oil lines needed replacing. I found a bit of a leak. Obviously. I didn't discuss it with you, so I'll only charge you for the parts."

This takes Jaime aback. His looks about the room, which could at best be described as careworn, though it is clean and well ordered. He finds this small offer, which seems to be one made in fairness, oddly touching. "It looks like this company needs as much in the way of coin as it can find. Won't you get into trouble? It's no way to conduct business."

"I suppose _you'd_ know." He turns back sharply and steps in at the man’s tone, laden as it is with the heavy judgement Jaime always appears to warrant. _There it is_ , he thinks, _there’s what they all think of me_. But then the world tilts slightly on it’s axis.

_Blue._

Like an oil slicked sea, two large pools of the clearest blue he has ever encountered peer out from grime covered skin. She finds him wanting, that much is certain. As if carved into crystal, never to leave, he sees scorn and distrust. It seems to rain down on him, his having moved closer only serving to bolster the force of it. Hard. Strong. Astonishing.

_She._

"You're a _woman_ ," Jaime whispers.

There is a moment of hurt in her at that and Jaime can almost feel the blade of it cutting. Then anger surpasses it, he believes, and last of all, a tired acceptance settles in, one with which he is familiar, in his own, very different way. He thinks, though, that hers may carry a higher price.

She says nothing at all, this woman, just pushing a hand through short hair, already streaked with oil but not enough to obscure the very pale strands underneath. "I'll process your payment as soon as I've washed my hands," she says, with nothing but a distant politeness, stepping around him and heading for the stainless steel sink in the corner.

Jaime can only stand and watch, for once stunned into utter silence. He stares at the woman’s backside and her legs, which appear to go on for miles, as she walks away. Her shoulders are wider than his own and nothing can be made of her waist, if she has one at all under the layers of clothing she is wearing. Her movement, however, is tempered and precise, speaking of a knowledge of her own strength and body. Wildly long fingers open a tub of soap when she reaches the sink, dipping in for some vile looking green slime. She spreads it over her hands, only to let out a quiet hiss as she rubs it into her palm.

Jaime finds his feet eating up the distance between them without thought. "Are you hurt?"

The woman looks back at him, obviously astonished that he would show any concern at all. Tentatively, she holds out her left hand for a few seconds, as if for Jaime to inspect it, even if it is pointless. He can’t see anything under the soap and grime. "It's just a small cut," she says, ducking her head and turning on the tap, beginning to scrub her skin.

Jaime doesn’t move away. He feels rooted in place, unable to move, just seeing oil slowly wash away and her skin emerge. As it does, he looks at her hairline and her ears, and begins to chuckle. Her head shoots upright and her shoulders square, almost defensively, but when she chances to stare at him, Jaime simply offers a reassuring smile. "You have _freckles_."

Her hands still under the running water and for a beat, she looks at him as if he were a tricky Pyramid Puzzle in the Herald. But then she nods and rinses off the tap itself before closing it, moving a few feet further away.

"Thank you for doing this so close to Midfest,” Jaime says. He was, after all, very lucky to find anywhere willing to take on the job on this day.

The big woman pauses in her new task of pulling paper towels from a wall dispenser. "Midfest means little to me," she addresses not Jaime himself, but the air between them solemnly. She pulls another towel out and begins to dry her hands.

"Nor me,” Jaime offers, watching her carefully. “When was it invented? 200 years ago? And for what? To gull money from parents unfortunate enough to have young children when winter comes, I think. And it isn't as if they ever manage to get the date right."

"No-one ever quite knows how long winter will be," she says to him, with a quiet sort of melancholy, but then appears to nearly shake her head, as if to ground herself. She balls up the towels and throws them into a nearby dustbin. "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. If you will come with me?"

She strides past him and Jaime follows her, being led back to the small office with the blue door, the old dog at his heels. _It is at least warmer in here_ , he thinks, as he sits on a worn chair by the desk. The mechanic goes to a filing cabinet and pulls out a sheaf of paper.

When she is settled in her place, she leans across the desk holding the copy of the breakdown of the repairs and starts to take him through the list, item by item. In truth, Jaime barely listens, only for long enough to wonder if her voice is always so deep, or if her cold has changed it. Then his eyes follow her finger while it moves softly across the page, the short nail still edged with grime despite her having washed it. As she goes on and he fails to hear a thing, he looks at her face. She’s young, he thinks, but how young is hard to say. Her nose has been broken at least twice and her features seem mannish, like one of those ancient Southroyon statues he had once seen abandoned in a stone quarry on a family holiday. Mostly formed, but crudely carved and left in place when its makers, all long, long since dead and forgotten, found a flaw in the stone. _She is ugly_. Yet there is such a diligence in the way her eyebrows are drawn over those brilliant eyes whilst she explains her work to him, and careful thought in the way her thick, chapped lips pout slightly in between each point. Ugly or no, Jaime wonders if, under that oil, he would discover freckles merely in a blaze across her cheekbones, or on her chin as well.

This train of thought is busy taking him places other than her chin when silence falls. Jaime drags his gaze back up from the confusion of knitwear poking out from blue overalls to see the woman damn near holding her breath. She has noticed his scrutiny and clearly finds it difficult. Something in him wishes it weren’t so.

“You don’t have to finish,” he says, leaning back in his chair. He does not stop looking at her, tilting his head instead, though it doesn’t serve to make any oil disappear, or make her seem less interesting. “I think I can trust you.” Somehow, he knows he can.

He now finds himself the subject of a curious regard of this woman’s own making. It is cautious and guarded, but not unpleasant in nature, though under it Jaime feels like a live butterfly, pinned to the board of an avid collector.

His own strange test isn’t a long one and is broken by the mechanic slowly reaching out the hand he has just watched dance across paper. “Then I will have to ask you to trust me with your card too.” The barest of smiles reaches her lips and Jaime can see her teeth, bright and slightly uneven behind her lips, making him think neither more nor less of her.

The same cannot, perhaps, be said of the mechanic, who accepts his form of payment with an almost inaudible mutter of, “Of _course_ it’s gold.”

He doesn’t believe he was supposed to hear it, but answers with a bland, “Of course.” A stained face screws up and the woman shrugs shyly at him as she slides his card into the processor. He thinks it is shyly, though it is hard to define through so much wool and oil. The wait for his payment to be completed is long, as is to be expected at this time, and while the little machine whirs away on the desk, a light weight settles on Jaime’s knee. He finds a red muzzle resting there, the dog it is attached to continuing to beat the air ferociously with her tail. “What’s her name?” Jaime asks, again scratching at lovely old ears.

The woman sitting across from him seems to consider answering most seriously. He is about to tell her that the name of a dog needn’t be kept a state secret when words come, surprisingly lightly, if still with measured care. "I once met a man who had a dog named Dog. The idea tickled my father. He thought the only thing more absurd would be to have a dog named Cat. And here she is.”

"Cat?"

She smiles, more widely this time, and Jaime thinks he would like to see it more, making him begin to question his own sense of reason. "Yes," she confirms, leaning forward to watch Cat happily dance on her front feet at having her name mentioned by somebody new.

"Mine are called Honor and Glory," Jaime offers, leaning down to rub his cheek against the old dog’s head. He hears the truncated snort of laughter that follows his statement and chooses to elaborate. "Though Honor is spelt very badly. Lew, my neighbour's son, drew them on the day I collected them and he left out the 'u' when writing the names _he_ chose."

He sits back up to see his golden card being held back out to him with a small, only mildly apologetic grin. He takes it and stands, folding it away into his wallet. Their business here is almost done. As the mechanic rises through the thousand or so feet it apparently needs to take her to her full height, Jaime asks, “Do you live nearby? I only ask because you might know of any good parks in the area.”

She looks at him, still cautiously, before appearing to let it go a little whilst she beckons Jaime to follow her back through the blue door and into the cold garage. “There's a small, fenced green by the bowling alley in Flea Bottom. It’s secure and they welcome dogs. I often take Cat there.”

“I’ve been driving my dogs out to the beach since I arrived back here,” Jaime explains when they come to a stop next to his car.

With his having halted, the woman swiftly goes to the rolling shutter under the first window and pulls it up, and pushes it yet further. Jaime is sure she is making the task look somewhat easier than it is, the metallic clatter far quicker than he has ever heard upon the opening of an average shopfront. “I thought a people carrier seemed a little downmarket,” she says wryly as she makes her way back to him.

“My other car's a Boratti,” Jaime smirks, making her shake her head in clear disbelief at his making a point of that as she pulls the car door open.

“Wait in the yard,” she says, slamming the door shut and Jaime goes out to stand in the heavily rutted, grey slush outside, half-convinced she would’ve added the word ‘idiot’, if she thought she could.

It is only seconds before his car is there and he watches her extricate herself from it, all long legs and arms, bulk and wool. She steps back and drops his keys into his hand. “Have a good Midfest,” she says simply.

“You too,” he replies before getting in and shutting the driver’s door. Though he suspects it is unlikely for both of them as he watches the woman wander back into her garage, pull the shutters back down and disappear in his mirrors.

He turns the radio on and winces at the blasted sound of the tune of the week on KLR. Popular it may be, but he would crawl on his belly over broken glass for an hour before buying any Dothraki razorgrass. He turns the radio off and decides it is time to get home. Honor and Glory await him.

It is only as he drives away that he realizes he never asked for the mechanic’s name. Her dog’s, yes. But not hers. When he gets home, he pulls out the receipts, frantically going through all the lists to see if it can be found there, but it is absent. It feels somehow urgent and Jaime doesn’t know why, yet in the end it doesn’t matter.

That night, when he sleeps, he dreams the old dream of his sister, clothed in nothing but her beauty, fading into the darkness as he calls her name in desperation. But the wrenching hurt of loss is ended by blue eyes in a changing face, and freckles that dance across flesh that feels like clay under his fingertips, because the form of it’s owner is utterly unknown to him. Yet it is warm as he is held by her, and he does not wake up to despair.

/-/-/-/-/

The cold of the wooden slats of the bench is seeping into his arse, or so it feels, and Jaime wonders why he is even doing this. _She might not even come, you fool_.

Still, Honor and Glory seem happy, chasing each other back and forth, and the sun is beginning to shine from the kind of sharp sky that only ever seems to happen when the weather bites with an unmerciful chill. This isn't a bad little place to bring dogs, though it lacks interest for owners, for all that their pets enjoy it well enough. With a short row of bare trees lining the path at one side and a few benches on which to sit, it at least has the benefit of being a shorter drive from his home than the beach. But the view is awful, nothing before him to be noted but the pattern of paint flaking from the aluminium cladding on the side of the old bowling alley. _More blue_ , he thinks wryly to himself.

Jaime is about to give up and go home when a familiar dog dashes across the snow to meet his own. Cat is clearly not feeling her age this morning, and a quick burst of barking is followed by the standard sniffing of parts before the three dogs resume the game of chase.

He hears footsteps slow, the crunching of frozen slush under large feet coming to a stop at the side of the bench. For just a second, Jaime is afraid to look, though he is unsure why. He steels himself and turns his head, painting on a smile which is rendered genuine in a heartbeat by what he sees before him. "Good morning,” he says. “Happy Midfest."

She _is_ ugly, of that there is no doubt. Her nose looks even more broken when it isn’t doused in oil, her jawline wouldn’t look out of place on one of those terrible professional wrestlers and she seems impossibly larger now that she’s wearing a thickly padded jacket in a horrible metallic blue. Jaime is half-tempted to say something about her needing more oil leaks, but can’t because he is too busy looking at her, taking her in. And it isn’t all bad. There are those eyes, of course, and he is almost stupidly pleased to find out that freckles populate her skin like students in a nightclub on half-price night. They’re _everywhere_. He thinks, at a distance, she might always be mistaken for a man, but the clues are there and he takes his time in looking for them as she stands there, gaping at him like a codfish. Her thighs, blessedly covered in just a single layer of thick denim, appear to be immensely strong, yet he is sure that there is something feminine to be found in their shape. And he is pretty certain he’s slept in shorter beds than her pale eyelashes. Of course, her red polka-dot wellies, with long stripy socks spilling out of the tops are decidedly girlish and thin, brittle looking hair sticks out under the edges of a truly hideous, ill-knitted, pink woollen hat.

The overall effect is disastrous, but Jaime thinks there is something adorable in the way she finally closes her mouth and tilts her head to one side, as if not quite believing he is there. It’s rather helped by the loosely attached bobble on the top her hat flopping over too, as if it would run away, had it the choice.

Jaime pats the bench beside him. It has been more than an hour since he cleared it, when it was still nearly dark. The noise seems to jar the woman awake and she blinks down at the proffered seat before taking it. She sits as far away as she can, her back ramrod straight, and Jaime worries that she is actually afraid of his being here until she turns to him. "Happy Midfest," she finally replies, before looking away at their dogs playing together.

"How are you feeling?" he asks, already aware that her breathing has eased since he saw her last.

"A lot better. Thank you."

They sit for some time in silence as the animals zig-zag around in the snow. Cat is having trouble keeping up with Honor and Glory, two ex-racing hounds he had initially adopted on a whim to save them from being put down at the end of their working lives. Normally they wouldn’t like such a long spell out, preferring to laze by the fire, but they are wearing fine new jackets and booties and show no signs of tiring of this new place yet.

After a while, he speaks to his quiet companion. "Who is the proprietor of Tarth Repairs? I wanted to send a letter to say how impressed I was with your work."

She glances at him as if confused, though her reply is simple enough. "I am."

"You?"

Her eyes narrow and the set of that jaw becomes decidedly stubborn. "Is this because I'm a woman?"

“No,” Jaime quickly says, well aware that she must come up against scornful men on a near daily basis in her chosen trade. His reasoning is quite different. “It's because you're quite young.”

“Twenty-one is young to be running a business in King’s Landing, I suppose,” she mutters, and Jaime feels his heart turn to lead in his chest. He had thought her around twenty-five. _Twenty-one? She is barely more than a child._ But the woman sitting next to him doesn’t know it, and begins to talk more, a slight frown of disbelief colouring her face when details start to fall unexpectedly from her lips. “I virtually grew up in that garage. My father bought the freehold to the building when I was a child. We moved here from Tarth when there was only us left.” She pauses, looking down at her gloved hands wringing each other as if it is happening of their own volition. But after a few moments, she glances back up at him with a brief smile, which drops away as she continues. “He didn't want me to be a mechanic at first, but eventually he gave in. Things were well for a long time, but these last couple of years...in winter people travel less, and there is little coin to be made selling snow chains in the heart of the city.” She smiles again, but with a practical kind of dry acceptance. “The roads are always gritted.”

“Damn the efficiency of the Small Council,” Jaime offers.

She huffs at that. “There used to be more of us, but now it's just me and Pod. My apprentice,” she explains at his unspoken query and Jaime remembers the dark-haired boy manning the desk two days past. She looks back out towards the animals frolicking in the snow. “And Cat.”

Jaime can’t help but wonder at her determination to keep her small enterprise going. It must be very hard indeed to have such a drop in seasonal trade and resist the urge to accept one of the many offers to buy her land which have no doubt dropped onto her doormat. He was surprised to find, with Tyrion’s vague directions, her old garage tucked away in a back street, but still on prime land in the capital. He doesn’t dare ask her if his father has made such an offer. Jaime suspects he has, at some point.

Next to him, long fingers start plunging into deep pockets, pulling out a lead, a handful of small bags for picking up dog waste, tissues and cough sweets.

“Are you keeping a lost band of warriors in there?” he asks, but she just shakes her head with a small grin, retrieving a small tea flask. Stuffing everything else away again, she pours a small amount of steaming liquid into the cup and pushes it across to him.

“Here,” she says, “it's hot and sweet. I hope that’s alright. I don’t know...”

“It’s fine,” Jaime says, accepting the offer and taking a sip. It is a little oversweet, but it is warm, and he is grateful for it. She snuffles into a tissue and he realizes she has let him drink first so as not to share anything more. He stretches his legs out in front of him and leans against the backrest. “All we need is a little campfire and this would be quite cozy.”

She laughs a little at that. “I think I'd rather not in this weather. And what would you know of camping, in any case?”

“My own father thought it character-building,” he says, adopting a slightly pompous tone. “It will teach you self-reliance, boy. There’s nothing wrong with gaining the skills to survive. It does a young man good to sleep under the stars, for a change.”

The mechanic sniggers down into the thick, upturned collar of her jacket. “And how did you find trying to sleep with stones digging into your back?”

“Not as bad as I thought it would be,” Jaime answers, quite honestly. “Though there was one time, when I was slightly older -,” he pauses, uncertain if he should be telling this at all, but one look at bright blue eyes is enough. “There was one occasion where I had to hike three miles in the pitch black to drag my absconding younger brother out of an isolated brothel.” Plump lips drop open and her whole face goes as red as the tip of her cold-addled nose. Her face swings away and back again and her mouth moves as if she is trying to speak, though she clearly can’t. “My brother made for a troublesome young man,” Jaime says, finishing with, “though he is much better now. Mostly.”

She continues to look at him, a curious mixture of embarrassment and bafflement at his sharing this potentially damaging information making merry war on her features. In the end, it would appear she doesn’t know what to say. She coughs into her tissue and changes the subject instead. “Did you not have somewhere to be today? I recall Pod saying there was a certain amount of cursing on the phone before he left for the holiday.”

Jaime shrugs and places the now empty cup back down next to the flask. “I decided I couldn't make it. My car broke down and the kennels were all booked.” _And I dreamed of you_ , he thinks, though he daren’t say it.

She looks at him sternly. “Your car was repaired, as I recall.”

He grins at her unapologetically. “I may have omitted that part when I made my excuses.”

She shakes her head, screws the cup to the top of the tea flask and stows it away in one of her capacious pockets. When her hand re-emerges she is holding a small paper bag, the rustling of which brings first one, then three dogs careering over to her. Jaime brushes some thrown up snow from his lapel as small dog treats are accepted and eaten with great enthusiasm. The mechanic pats the head of Cat, who is now panting heavily. “She’s getting tired,” she says, standing with a soft moan of effort. “I should take her home now.” While she clips the lead to Cat’s collar, she looks at him and smiles. “I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.”

“You too,” he replies as she begins to walk away. “Who should I address my letter to, by the way?” he calls after her.

She stops and glances back at him, perplexed. But then she nods, as if to herself. “Brienne. Brienne Tarth.”

_Brienne._

Jaime watches Brienne pacing away through the trodden snow, wanting nothing more than to ask her to come back, but lacking any reason. Then, as if she can hear his thoughts, she slows and spins about to face him again. “I -,” she begins to say, only for it to come to nothing. They look at each other in silence as Honor and Glory go over to nudge at Cat with their muzzles. They bump at Brienne’s leg and she drops her gaze to them, only for it to flicker straight back up to Jaime, edged with hope.

 _Ask me for anything_ , he thinks. _And I would give it._ He has no idea why, but he knows it is true.

“They seem to like each other,” Brienne says, her voice shaking slightly. “I know you’re probably busy, but I’ll be walking Cat here again, an hour or so after sundown.”

He lets out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding and smiles at her. “They do get along, don’t they?”


	2. Jelly Puppies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thanks must, as ever, go to RoseHeart for her wonderful work as my beta, and to Nurdles for the trousers.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own it not.

THE MECHANIC - JELLY PUPPIES 

The two days after Midfest saw sleet fall, just about everywhere in the city, only to freeze into treacherous sheets when the evenings came. By the time Brienne gets to the park on the third evening they have met, she has toppled over already, the deep tread on the soles of her wellies unable to prevent her being caught unawares by a hidden patch of ice. She'd tipped onto her backside right in front of a bus stop across the street. A group of youths had been gathered there and they laughed at her. She'd even been hit by a few blobs of grey, wet snow while she scrambled unsteadily back to her feet, but as the boys moved closer, she reached her full height again and that seemed to put a swift end to any clever ideas they had. They ran off, still full of amusement at her expense, though she found some of her own in a scrawny, red-headed lad slipping over himself, with no real harm done, in the middle of his attempt to scamper away.

Such things barely touch her now and, having checked that Cat was unharmed, she hobbled her way to the little park, well aware that she will be stiff and bruised come morning. She tries to hide the slight limp as she takes in the snow-spattered lawn, turned over in places by local dogs and otherwise glowing a bright yellow under the violent light of the street lamps.

She sees Honor and Glory before she sees Jaime, the arrival of Cat bringing them over at top speed. She just about unclips her old girl's lead in time to stop three dogs from making themselves a real tangle with it. That being done, she glances up to find the dark figure step from the shadows on the path and into the lamplight.

_He is here._

He is also looking like he just stepped off the cover of a magazine, in marked contrast to herself. She stands back up awkwardly, gripping the dog lead tightly in her hand. She cannot conceal that she’s surprised he is here at all. More hurtful than a few choice names thrown out by children had been her certainty that this time she would find the park empty, and herself alone again. She feels like a fool, her heart speeding up in her chest at the prospect merely of having some company whilst she is here.

"Hello," she says, far more timidly than she would like.

Jaime ignores her greeting, leaning over to his left a little to take in her legs. "Are you hurt?"

_Again he asks it, just like when we met._

Brienne gawps ungracefully down at the damp, grey stains on her jeans and shrugs. "I fell. The path was icy. It’s nothing." She fails to mention the boys at the bus stop.

Green eyes question her in total silence, but any doubt in them is soon gone and he steps to her side, an elegantly leather-gloved hand rising there. "Take my arm, my lady," he dryly offers.

"I'm no lady," she says, perhaps too bluntly, but she will not be mocked by _everyone_ she sees today.

"I meant nothing by it, Brienne," Jaime replies with a good-natured huff. "Consider it a favour to me." He twists his leg and points toward his calf, the wet material covering it showing clear signs of his having taken a tumble of his own. "I caught myself at the railings, just about. So you can help keep me upright too."

Slowly, warily, she lets her fingers wrap about his forearm. "See?" Jaime says. "You took my arm and nobody died. Nary even a giraffe was harmed."

"Stop that," she mutters as they set off along the path, the frozen crust of ice crunching sharply beneath their feet.

She isn't quite sure what to make of Jaime yet. That he can be kind she has no doubt, but it seems hidden behind a sardonic facade, constructed to keep people at a distance. Just last night he had jested that he should like to know how she and her fellow giraffes manage to sleep at night, 'what with all that neck wibbling about'. She'd shoved at his shoulder, almost pushing him over into the snow, but he'd just laughed as she apologised and grabbed at his lapels to steady him, not knowing what had come over her.

Thrice they carefully tread their way along the short path at the side of the park, back and forth. Brienne drops into a strange kind of stupor, nearly convincing herself for the briefest time that she really is like one of the ladies in the old tales, all starchy crinolines and heaving bosoms. But that thought alone is enough to bring her back to this biting cold and reality, along with the rasping sound of the extremely synthetic padding of her jacket rubbing against a coat that no doubt cost more money than she has seen in weeks.

She removes her hand from Jaime's sleeve. "Maybe we should sit," she says. He looks at her curiously, but nods in agreement and they make their way to what Brienne already, in the privacy of her own mind, calls 'their' bench. She brushes over the slats with wide sweeps of her arm to clear away the frost, making the palm of her woollen glove wet. She sits with a wince, thinking that her bruising is developing rapidly.

Jaime smiles his thanks as he sits too and gazes at her, still curious, but Brienne simply reaches into her jacket and retrieves her flask, holding it out to him. She forestalls his speaking when he accepts it by rummaging in both pockets and pulling out two small bags. As is becoming habit, the familiar rustle of paper brings three dogs charging over, their panting clouding the air in rising billows. She gives all three a small treat and Glory, being first, walks away only to come back again, perhaps in the hope of getting another. She laughs and pats their heads in turn. "Nice try, Glory," she says, stowing the treats away. They look hopefully at the remaining bag clasped in her damp glove, but she tells them 'no' and Cat walks disconsolately away, followed by her new friends.

"Treats for us as well?" Jaime asks through the steam rising from his plastic cup and Brienne nods happily.

"Yes," she answers, taking a sweet from the bag and biting into it viciously.

Jaime chokes on a mouthful of tea. "Did you just bite the head off a Jelly Puppy?"

"I did," she grins, offering him the bag and popping the rest of the doomed, sugary animal between her chapped lips. "Do you want one?"

"Shocking behaviour for a dog lover," Jaime coughs. "And yes. I haven't taken the head from a Jelly Pup since I was about twelve." He takes one and growls lightly down at it, then does just that with great aplomb.

He laughs as he eats the remainder of the unfortunate sweet and Brienne places the bag on the bench between them. They take turns in pulling out one Jelly Puppy after another and the poor things perish in ever more inventive ways. Jaime pretends one is in a rocket crash, throwing it up into the air and catching it between his disturbingly perfect lips with a soft, high-pitched wail. Brienne decides to be a sea monster, snapping at her chosen victim until it is caught between her clacking teeth. They even set two of the sweets to jousting, trotting them along just above the grained surface of a wooden slat, though the effect is a little disappointing without lances.

Once the Jelly Puppies are gone, she crumples up the empty bag and stuffs it into a pocket. She looks up and finds Jaime leaning towards her slightly, appearing concerned. "The cruel murder of sweets aside, you seem even quieter than usual this evening, Brienne. Are you alright?"

"What is this, Jaime?" she asks before she can stop herself. "Are we friends?"

He stares at her, unreadable, for more than half a minute. "I don't know, Brienne. I think we could be. But we know so little about each other." Those last words seem to be aimed at himself more than her, but Brienne can only think of one way to resolve this.

"Ask me something," she says bluntly, covering up her shyness and her fear that he'll want to know the things that men so often ask her with a cruel sneer.

Brienne folds her arms around her body and glances at Jaime, who, no doubt, notices the movement that she can't prevent. But instead of the harsh taunts she is used to, he smiles. "What did you like, when you were small?" he asks quietly. "Well, smaller," he lightly qualifies.

Both relief and embarrassment bubble up through Brienne and it spills out of her in a hesitant, nervous laugh.

Jaime tugs at the sleeve of her jacket. "Come now, Brienne, you can tell me. Was there a mysterious stranger on a motorcycle, who stole your young heart in a music video? Perhaps a stern septa in a Tarthian septry made you believe in the Seven? Maybe you liked horses? You seem to me the type who might have been obsessed with 'Piebald Beauty'."

"No!" she grins, shaking her head. "You'll just tease me."

He shrugs unapologetically. "I'll tease you, yes. But I won't laugh at you."

Brienne lets that clear half-truth pull back the courage, which had so quickly poured away from her, and takes a deep breath. "Alright. Renly Baratheon. I thought myself in love with Renly Baratheon for _years_."

"Who?" Jaime says innocently and she slaps him lightly on his arm.

"You know full well. The film star. Aren't you related to him? I thought I saw that in the papers."

For just a second, Jaime's mood seems to sour, his words bleak. "Through my sister's first marriage." But then a slow grin tugs at his lips and eyebrow arches with dry amusement. "Really? _Renly_."

"Don't start," Brienne warns, deciding to share what she can, whilst she can, with a self-deprecating roll of her eyes. "I used to sing all the songs from 'The Knight of Flowers' into my hairbrush, and he only had a bit part in that. I thought him the handsomest man in the world. On my sixteenth nameday I waited for hours to meet him in the rain, outside the premiere of 'The War of the Five Kings'. He was so sweet. He came over and signed my programme for me. And he hugged me for a picture. Which I still have," she says, unashamed about that at least.

Although he is definitely finding this far too funny, his eyes sharpened with humour, Jaime is perfectly serious as he says, "Of course."

Brienne looks down into her lap. "And...he _didn't_ laugh at me. When I told him it was my nameday and he asked my age, he didn't laugh at me for being larger than him already." She shakes her head gently at her younger self. "I would've followed him to the end of the world, back then."

"You must've been devastated when he wed the Knight of Flowers. As such," Jaime offers quietly from her side.

Brienne snorts and slaps her hands over her face in mortification at the memory of that time. "Oh, don't. It was like he'd _died_." She turns towards Jaime, opening her hands like window shutters at the sides of her face. "I wouldn't leave my room for days. My poor father. Oh, gods, I cried! I feel so foolish when I think of it now."

"I don't think there's any need," Jaime says, softly adding, "We don't get to choose who we love." Again, he seems to be speaking as much of himself as of her or anybody else, but then he leans towards her, his hair cascading forwards over his brow, still soft and beautiful despite it being turned from a gold she had dreamed of, just last night, to a lurid orange under the streetlamps. "Besides, it was an awfully gaudy ceremony. Ribbons and roses everywhere. It almost made _me_ cry too," he smiles. "What about more recently?"

It is an afterthought, nothing more, but Brienne sits bolt upright, all relaxation in her gone. Her hands ball into fists and drop, with a firm thump, onto the bench at her sides. "Nothing of note," she grinds out into the chilly night air. She stays silent for a while, trying not to remember chalk scrawlings she rubbed from the wall side of a reversible blackboard, normally used for scoring games of darts, in the pub she no longer visits. A lost record of the poor price of her, but one she had seen through her tears, nonetheless. "And I think that would be a story for another day, anyhow. What about you?"

That last is thrown out with no more thought than Jaime's own question had been, but its effect is no less. The man beside Brienne almost throws himself bodily into the corner where back and armrests meet, the air hissing out of him lowly, making him appear small. He doesn't seem to hear her whispered apology, his gaze suddenly latched to their dogs, who are but three wagging tails and sets of rear legs; finding, as they have, something of interest beneath a hedge. Leather clad fingers tap a disjointed, swift rhythm onto wood, but eventually they slow and he looks back at her. "I've only ever had one crush, such as it was, Brienne," he says. "It started when I was far too young, and lasted far too long. Though I think that's probably a tale for another time too."

Brienne simply nods and looks at her feet, thinking that she shouldn't have said anything at all and that her toes are very cold in her boots. The air takes a heavy, awkward edge between them, almost suffocating despite the sharp, clean chill in it. Yet it is broken soon enough, Jaime's voice, desperately uncertain, calling her back. "Or perhaps..."

He leans forward onto his elbows, clasping his hands together. "I have never spoken of this, Brienne. To _anyone_." He turns to her and Brienne thinks he looks rather afraid. Fear isn't something she imagines he's had to face too often and she can't fathom why he is feeling it now.

"You can speak to me freely, or not, Jaime," she reassures him. "I will tell no-one."

His eyes flicker over her, in her awful pink hat and shiny blue jacket, and Brienne doesn't know what he is seeking to find. Yet whatever it is, it must be there, because with one last exhalation through lips pursed, as if to whistle, he drops his head and whispers, "My sister."

Brienne waits, sure that there must be more to this and when Jaime looks up again, waiting for her reaction, she is doing nothing but gaping at him stupidly.

He smiles wryly and speaks again. "Brienne. I have only ever loved _one_ woman. My _sister_. Since we were children. But we are done."

"Oh," Brienne mutters to herself, only then to have the enormity of what he is telling her crash over her like a storm wave. She actually shudders inside her coat when shock ripples down her spine. _"Oh."_

She looks at him, still lacking understanding. "You... _only_ her?"

" _Only_ her," Jaime quietly replies and Brienne wants to feel more revulsion than she does. It is there, no doubt, but the man beside her appears as one flayed, the skin grated from him and pain pouring from the open wounds. She cannot imagine the how or the why of it, but she believes him when he says that he has only ever loved his sister and that it has ended. Brienne thinks of Cersei Lannister and it crushes what little she remembers of the warmth of her recent dreams, though she had never thought they would amount to anything anyway. It is not hard to call an image of Jaime's sister to mind, for she is everywhere, on billboards and in newspapers and on television. Always in red. Always perfect. Always in control. That thought makes her look at Jaime, really look at him, and realize that if Cersei's control extended into her relationship with her brother, then he might have lacked much in it.

"It was her choice. To end it. Not yours?" Brienne asks him.

"I wouldn't say that," Jaime says, clearly relieved that she isn't simply walking away from him. "But she would call me and I would go to her. That is how it worked. With me, if with no-one else. Then I found out some harsh truths. She called me as usual. And I didn't go." There is a world of explanation and of hurt left out in his bluntly uttered sentences and Brienne can't think what enormity could've imposed itself and broken such a lifelong intimacy, however twisted and wrong.

"What you found out must have been bad," Brienne mutters, unsure as to whether or not she even wants to know.

"It was, but I think we were ending anyway," Jaime says, as if mocking himself. "She is one of the most beautiful women in the world, and she used to call me her mirror." He scratches at his short beard with purpose and a wry grin. "But what happens when your mirror starts to age? You come to loathe it. She saw the grey in my beard and then in my hair. She saw crow's feet creeping from the corners of my eyes and told me I couldn’t be any more repulsive to her if I’d had a limb lopped off."

Brienne is thrown into a place she is completely incapable of comprehending. "Why would _any_ of that matter if she loved you?"

"You're a woman. You tell me."

He means nothing by it. It's just an offhanded comment, and Brienne knows this is so, but still a sudden rush of pure anger propels her up to her feet.

_"Don’t."_

"What?" Jaime looks up at her, genuinely nonplussed.

Brienne doesn't care. "Look at you. At _her_. You ask me to tell you of mirrors. How can you know what it’s like to look into them to see a freak? The subject of bets? The poor punchline in men’s jokes? Don’t ask me to give you answers about mirrors, real or otherwise. You’ll find none here." She is breathless when she is done and turns away to leave.

But she’s no more than a step away when she hears him stand and long fingers snag at her arm, spinning her gently back in his direction. "Brienne, I didn’t mean to...", Jaime's voice trails away when all of her words seem to register within him. "Bets? Did you say bets?"

"I shouldn’t have said anything," she replies nervously. "It doesn’t matter." _It does._

"It bloody well _does_ ," Jaime hisses up at her, as if he had heard her stray thought.

For a moment, she stares at him warily, but then sees he is telling it as he means. That he should feel any anger on her behalf is confusing, because, despite the things told tonight, they still hardly know one another. But she cannot deny it warms her. "Nothing came to pass of it. Really. Not in the end," she says.

At first, he does not seem to believe her, the set of his jaw becoming more stubbornly perfect as he looks at her eyes, her cheeks, even her misshapen nose, as if he can somehow scry the truth from the old breaks in it. In the end, he seems satisfied and smiles up at her, though his words come dryly, aimed purely at himself. "At least you didn’t fuck your sister."

Brienne's skin reddens at that, and she wonders how it hasn't happened at all before, during the course of this odd meeting. Not wanting him to laugh at her sudden embarrassment, she squares her shoulders, making herself as tall as she can be, and peers down at him. "My sisters are dead," she tells him, though there is no real harshness or sorrow in the statement.

For a heartbeat, he seems horrified, but then he lifts himself carefully up onto his tiptoes, to her eye level. She tries to keep a straight face and only then does he see her intent. He drops back down onto his heels with a groan. "You really are impossible to joke with, do you know that?" She shrugs at him, quite happily, only to watch him stare down at a bootprint she must've left earlier, already frozen solid. He teases at it with his shoe, tap-tap-tapping until it cracks and breaks into three distinct slabs atop both grass and stone. "Brienne," he says, "I don't know if you will want to -"

"Yes," she answers swiftly, without him having to fully ask. His face whips back up so he can see her and she nods, somehow certain that she has found a good friend, even if that is all it can ever be. "I'll be here in the morning, Jaime."

In the full knowledge that he is gazing at her as if she is some kind of wonder, though she has no idea why, Brienne crouches down with a light judder of discomfort and calls Cat. Her dear dog ambles over in her own time, her tongue lolling out of one side of her mouth.

As Honor and Glory follow, Jaime takes a place, lower beside her, and makes an offer. "Look, Brienne, you've already fallen over and you're clearly sore. I have my car."

Brienne clips Cat to her lead. "Not your Boratti?"

Jaime laughs a little at her side. She hopes he is having the same impractical and horrifying vision that she is; Jaime and three dogs squashed into a two-seater sports car, with Brienne hanging onto the roof as they race through the streets of King's Landing. " _Not_ my Boratti," he confirms. "I can give you a lift home, if you'd like." He begins to try to attach his own pets to their leads, though Honor makes it tricky by choosing to spend a few seconds chasing his own tail. "In the interests of our newfound honesty, I should tell you I do not make a hobby of fashioning furniture from the bones of impressively tall women. Or any other women." His arms have been darting out the whole time and he finally catches Honor's collar to secure it with a short sigh of relief. "Or even men, for that matter." He stands, pulls Brienne up with him, and smiles. "It ruins the carpets."

"And there was I," Brienne tells him, with an mildly scathing edge, "thinking your home would be all imported marble and exotic hardwood flooring."

"It is," Jaime says, with a sly look. "But I have some rugs."

Brienne shakes her head, for he is both hopeless, in more ways than she could have ever conceived, and somewhere, buried beneath all of it, someone she could come to care for. It may even be that she already does.

She stops trying to fool herself in that regard and takes a leap of her own, no less than Jaime's when he had told her about Cersei, though he will never know it. She is determined on that matter. She reaches up with her hand and lightly holds Jaime's arm again. "Your car?"

Her friend just gazes at her with a gratefulness she can't quite bear, so she wiggles her fingers, as if impatient, until it stirs him into movement. They make towards his car, which is just around the corner, though their promenade could hardly be described as smooth this time. On no less than four occasions, they have to let go of one another to untangle the dog leads, as this unexpected joining of parties causes understandable excitement amongst their pets.

It is an ungraceful thing, all told, and Brienne feels frankly silly when she raises her hand and holds onto Jaime's sleeve for the last few steps to his car, though he pauses for it and doesn't seem to mind. They secure the dogs in the rear seats, Cat lying contentedly on her back between Honor and Glory, while they lick at her ears, before Brienne notices what she should have seen before.

She watches Jaime move around to the driver's side and waits until he stops moving himself before glancing with disdain down at his wheels. "Oh, look," she blandly says. _"Snow chains."_

His face screws up at her, and still doesn't manage to pass for remotely ugly. "I bought them before I even knew Tarth Repairs existed. Stop glaring and get in the damned car, will you?"

Her point made, she does so, and tells him to take her to the garage. Jaime slumps in his seat at that, obviously thinking she is not trusting him, in spite of the things he has now shared only with her. He turns the key and pulls out in sullen silence.

She lets the streets fly past without disabusing him of the notion, simply watching the coloured shopfronts flit by, with a slight shudder as they pause at traffic lights by the badly named Littlefinger's Foods of the East, which, combined with its reputation and shockingly pink neon hoarding, makes for as ill-welcoming a place as she's ever seen.

The drive is not long, but Jaime is fairly scowling when they pull up outside the rear gates of Tarth Repairs. "I can take you home, Brienne," he mutters under his breath. "You don't have to walk there from here."

"I _am_ home, Jaime," she tells him, feeling bad about having hidden it at all. She points upwards, at the higher brickwork above the very front of her business. "Like I said, _here_."

Brienne isn't sure if he is angry or happy at that knowledge, for so many emotions flit across his features, but he seems to settle for a grin. "So you really _do_ live nearby?"

She nods, and with a silently mouthed 'thank you', gets out of the car to retrieve Cat from the back seat, who seems rather unhappy at the idea of leaving her own friends. Brienne has to tug on her collar to make her move in any way, only to have her old dear flop back down between the racing hounds as soon as she lets go again.

All the while, Jaime is twisted around in the driver's seat, finding no small amusement in it, which might be well deserved. She looks at him and speaks without thought. "Look, I'm just about to make a hot drink. Would you like something?"

The offer surprises her no less than it does him, so Brienne decides that some of his own words would not go amiss. "In the interests of honesty, I don't make furniture out of the bones of friends." She notices Jaime's reaction to her calling him a friend as she tries to glower and go on, her tone as strict as she can make it. "Even those who buy their snow chains elsewhere."

He looks at her with sheer fondness, though she is having to virtually drag poor old Cat from the seat and onto the pavement. "Can I park here?"

The question emerges from the car as Cat looks away in a decided sulk at the indignity of it all. Brienne closes the back door and moves to the passenger one, sticking her head in and letting her mouth run loose with no thought at all until it is done. "There'll be no traffic wardens until morning. _Oh!"_

In absolute horror at herself, she slams the door shut as she says, "Not that I mean..." Her words trail away to nothing and she spins to lean against the small gate to the yard outside of her home. The frost on it stings her forehead and she cannot believe it has taken her so little time to make a fool of herself again.

_Please drive away. That isn't what I meant. I think I would like it, but it isn't what I meant. Please drive away. Please drive away._

Jaime doesn't.

She can't fail to note car doors opening and closing and the pattering of slender paws. She feels Cat's lead tugging at her arm as Honor and Glory greet her once more and hears the crisp cutting of expensive shoes into ice and slush on the pathway.

Finally, there is a twitching at the end of her hideous, yet superbly warm coat. "It's alright, Brienne. I know what you meant." She is just about able to turn and look at Jaime. He simply points at the gate, little else to be read in him. "Just get us all inside, will you? It's _cold_ out here."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work will be updated intermittently. Thank you for your patience.


	3. Mittens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, RoseHeart. :)
> 
> Disclaimer: I own it not.

 

THE MECHANIC - MITTENS

 

"Don't worry about Honor and Glory," Brienne reassures him, having recovered her composure a touch, while she opens the side door leading into her garage. "The pits are sealed. I keep them that way when they aren't in use." She hits a light switch and Jaime follows her in from the biting cold. It takes a couple of seconds for the stuttering buzz of the overhead lights to settle into the harsh, bright glare he has seen before, that washes the colour from all of Brienne's skin, except for her bright red nose.

They let their dogs loose and watch them as near frantic levels of sniffing and running about are reached. "You don't sleep in that tiny office, do you?" Jaime asks her.

Brienne just smiles at him. "No. But Pod's been known to after the odd night out, when he couldn't find his way home." Her face drops into a mask of slight confusion. "Which is only around the corner."

"Oh, to be young again," Jaime lightly says.

"I don't think I ever _was_ that young," Brienne says, walking towards a door Jaime had not noticed during his last visit. In fact, there are a number of things he simply hadn't seen. The garage is large, but it is not square, more of an L-shape with the door to the office being set back from the main body of the garage. Brienne leads him over to another door next to it, reaching out to touch the corner that juts out on the way.

"This is the back of Rafi’s mini-mart. He’s been renting it from us since we moved here," she explains, maybe to counter the possibility of a newly-burgeoning silence between them. She turns back to him as she pulls open the door to her actual home. "He sells mare's milk, but I've never been sure exactly who buys it." She wedges the door open and begins to march up a flight of stairs.

When she gets to top she looks down at him. "You can stay there if you like, but it's much warmer up here."

Jaime doesn't know why, but he has to force his feet into moving, though they carry him to her swiftly enough. He arrives in a small hallway, completely ordinary and appearing to run for some of the width of the building.

Yet is a complete contrast to the grey chill of the garage downstairs and the sharpness of the winter outside. "It _is_ warm," he mutters, which seems to make Brienne laugh.

"Yes, I have heating. I hate to shock you, Mr Lannister, but I even have running water." She pulls off that pink hat of hers and ruffles her hair, though it gives the blonde strands little life. They just fall flat against her head. The hideous accessory is then sat unceremoniously on top some others which, in turn, are resting atop the handles of a few umbrellas and walking sticks in a small stand.

Jaime runs his hand over them, picking up one with a fingertip, using a hole he is sure isn't supposed to be there. "These are all dreadful."

"I tried to teach myself to knit," Brienne tells him, neither offended or apologetic in any way. "And they serve me well enough."

Jaime grins. "Why don’t you wear this one?" He pulls the sorry item on over her hair, tugging down firmly on the ties. "See? Blue is a good colour on you."

 _It really is_ , he thinks, in the heartbeat before she takes it off again with a slightly disapproving frown and puts it back where it was. She shucks herself out of her jacket next to him, only for an all-enveloping and shapeless, pale green wool jumper to emerge.

Jaime wonders if she is always so hidden, a quiet bolt of frustration at it mixed with the idea that her doing so is a shame. He says nothing though, just taking his own coat off and hanging it next to hers at Brienne's unspoken invitation.

"The bathroom is that way, if you need it," she tells him, pointing toward the end of the flat that would be over the office. She moves around him carefully in the narrow confines of the hall, being cautious not to brush against him.

"I’m good," he replies as she strides away towards what must be her living area.

Again he follows her, past a few almost closed doorways, until the hallway opens out into a long, narrow room, a small kitchen, all clean lines and pale airiness at one end and much warmer, terracotta tones engulfing the other. Brienne waves for him to sit and he does, on the near end of an extremely large sofa, with sunken buttons and brown leather. It's much more comfortable than it appears to be and Jaime looks at the smaller one opposite him, across the surface of a solid oak low table. There is little here in the way of things, but what there is seems to be of a high quality, lending a sturdy cosiness to Brienne's home.

He gazes at her while she fills the teakettle and turns it on in the light flooding out from under the wall cabinets; a mass of limpid green wool and one long leg, unobscured by a breakfast bar, showing the clear signs of her earlier tumble on the ice. She turns and catches the area holding his attention and pats at the wet, heavy cotton as if embarrassed. "Do you mind if I quickly change?" Jaime shakes his head and she comes over to pick up the remote for her viewerscreen. She hands it to him. "Make yourself comfortable."

She disappears, into one of the rooms immediately next to this one, and he can hear the sliding of a wardrobe door. Then all sound stops, as if she is listening for him too, so Jaime taps a button, turning on the modestly sized screen hanging on the wall across from him. He flicks absently through a few channels, skipping with extra speed past KL Business Time, which seems to have dug up an old interview with his father, and settles on what appears to be a rerun of 'Stoneheart's Choice'. Less than a few minutes of it is enough to confirm that the continuing adventures of the undead woman and her fire-loving horde of devotees are just as bad as he remembers them to have been the first time around. "Stop mooning after her, Thoros," Jaime finally says to the screen. "It'll never happen."

"Do you _like_ this?" The amused question comes from beside him.

She must've moved quiet as a mouse to get that close to him and he looks up at Brienne in astonishment, only to find yet more that bewilders him.

The woman who has been unformed in his dreams, the shape of her shifting like untouchable mist in his sleeping mind, now definitely has it, in the flickering, blue light from the viewer. Suddenly, she is there, in a moment made so very solid both in body and in him. While he lets out a strangled _'no'_ to her question, Brienne leans down to switch on a small floor lamp next to him. The shade, mostly a frosted cream, but with a delicate pattern made of shards of coloured glass, throws a warm light across her when she stands again.

And there she is, made whole, absolutely nothing he would've said he could want mere days ago, and everything he wants now. Jaime's stomach feels as it would were he on a rollercoaster, just as it tips over into a steep drop, but Brienne doesn't know anything of it. He might be transfixed by the band of distorted light, red and green that sweeps over a large bicep and her torso, clothed as it now is under some form-fitting, grey ribbed cotton, but she is looking at the screen. "I wish they'd show the musical episode again," she mutters softly. "That was a lot of fun." She turns and goes to the boiled kettle, absently and quietly singing, "If you can't burn 'em, you might as well hang 'em, if you think they've got to diiiiie."

The dark words of it aside, and there was only ever black comedy in that show in any case, there is an ease in the whole of her in this place; in the rounded tone of her voice and the precise way she moves to pick up and pour water from the teakettle into two polka-dotted mugs, that makes him unable to look away. Her legs are now covered to her ankles by soft and thin dark blue cotton, which follows her form just as well as it hides it.

As if he hadn't known it before, it is obvious now that she is immensely strong. Each tiny shift of her weight over her feet sees muscles flicker in her thighs and her calves. The kettle clicks back into its place and Jaime's eyes wander upwards. He doesn't know if this is a mistake, because the odd, vertiginous feeling within him grows abruptly stronger. From this angle, he can see that Brienne isn't wearing a bra. Frankly, she doesn't need to, the miserly rise of her breasts from her chest almost outbidden by her nipples, which pull her shirt more taut across her chest. And he can't look away.

_Fuck._

He knows he is in trouble now. Jaime has tried to remind himself, over the last few days, that dreams and thoughts mean nothing, for all that he spent so much of his life telling himself the flat opposite when it came to Cersei. But his brother's words, which tumbled out slurringly, yet not without a hefty measure of the truth, around a half a year ago in a tatty booth in a dive bar in Lannisport, come roaring back to him. He remembers looking at the sponge spilling out from a tear in the red, plastic covered seating, as if it had wanted to run away from the reality of it all too.

 _'You fall hard, Jaime. That happened with Cers, more than you could ever realise. You won't ever speak of it, but I know it, brother. It has been a fact, for all of my life. For the sake of us all, I only hope you can fall_ twice.'

 _I am falling,_ Jaime thinks, with the awareness that this strange young woman, currently doing nothing but squeezing tea bags dry on the insides of the rims of cups with a spoon, has captured his attention as fully as his sister ever had. Perhaps more so, because she has nothing in her that he would ever have expected to hold his interest. Except her care.

Jaime tears his attention away from Brienne and stands. For a second, he thinks of just walking out, the panic in him at this barrage of knowledge being too much. Yet his feet don't make it very far at all.

There is a small bookcase against the wall, sat between the lamp and the kitchen, and he steps gingerly over to it. There aren't many volumes stacked there, which surprises him, but then he sees an e-reader on a lower shelf. She is younger, so it may be that he shouldn't be so shocked at it, even if it makes him feel his age.

There are only three pictures of her on display, that he has seen, and they are all here.

He picks up the first. It is the one he knows of and it makes him smile. She clearly had been waiting for hours, for her hair was longer and slicked over her face and head, dripping down over the blue of her kagoul. She was soaked.

He feels a nudge at his elbow and takes the proffered drink.

"Don't tease me," Brienne says, sounding worried about his seeing this at all.

"I'm not, even if you did look like a drowned rat," he says, countering her arm bump with his own. "You were so happy."

"I was," she says, ignoring the other part of his comment, though Jaime has no idea why. But then her lips purse for a moment and she asks of Renly, "Is he really that nice?"

"I'm afraid he is, Brienne," Jaime answers. "And Loras isn't so bad either. Though I will maintain that their wedding was outrageously and sickeningly sweet until my dying breath. There was poetry, I tell you. _Bad_ poetry. They wrote it themselves."

She laughs next to him, a huff-huffing of a thing, as Jaime places that photo frame carefully down and picks up the next.

It is a picture of Brienne as a child, a school tie twisted awkwardly about her neck and her eyes bright with mirth. 

"It was my father's favourite picture of me. I'm not sure why," she tells him.

Jaime knows, and is curious that she doesn't. "I think I can see it. You look happy here too."

He can almost see the shutters falling in front of her, closing her away. "I wasn't." She shifts uneasily on her feet. "My school years weren't good ones."

He can't imagine they were, but her decision to step back from this only makes Jaime more determined to hear more, if she will share it. He looks at this ordinary picture. Brienne's white cardigan was sat askew on that day, as if she had been wrestled into place, and her hair was combed into thin, pale curtains of neatness over her head; he can only assume by a strict dinner lady or teacher. Yet there is something else he notices. Her teeth. They really were a mess back then, protruding quite alarmingly; the work of a thumb gone mad.

"Why did you stop? With the braces?" Brienne nearly flinches next to him, but Jaime won't have her thinking badly of herself over something as stupid as teeth. He nudges at her again. "I don't mean anything by it, but they did look like migrating tombstones." With a sly grin, he points, waving his finger up and down at her. "Less so, now the rest of you has caught up with them."

Brienne stares at him flatly, as if trying to discern ill intent, but eventually she just gives a small shrug. "I had them removed a half a year early. When I started to train here, I didn't know my own strength. A couple of times, I strained too hard on tools, and ended up smacking myself in the mouth with them. Bad enough with teeth, worse with metal stuck to them."

"Ouch," he mutters, not without some sympathy.

"Yes," she says, even threatening to break out into a tiny smile. "There was blood _everywhere._ I clattered my nose a time or two as well. Dad was on the verge of stopping me working here at all, so I made the choice. I don't regret it."

Jaime peers, completely openly, at the minor unevenness still present in her front teeth, until Brienne squeezes her thick lips shut in response. "It makes no odds," he tells her. "You were almost done anyway."

She gazes down into her tea, not wanting to hear him, he thinks. "I don't think it would've made any difference in my case, do you?"

"No," he says, before he can stop his mouth running and adding, "not to me." _And not in the way you're thinking, either._ He gently replaces her school photo and picks up the last. In it, Brienne is standing outside in the yard, her arms wrapped about a vast man with dreadfully similarly unkempt hair and a truly kindly smile. "This is your father? He was _enormous_."

She plucks the frame from his hand and rests it on her long fingers, running her thumb softly over a lost face she obviously holds more dear than any other. Yet after a moment of closed-off wistfulness, she weakly smiles at Jaime. "He used to be lot bigger than that. This was taken a year or so before he died. He was a fair bit bulkier, but his illness made him waste away."

"I'm sorry," Jaime says, not knowing what else to offer.

"Don't be," Brienne says matter-of-factly, replacing her father's image on the bookcase, with great care and a final stroke of the dark wooden frame.

She seems to sink into an understandable sadness then, but Jaime has a question to ask. "Do you think he would have liked me?"

Brienne almost snorts into her teacup at that. "No, not at all!" Yet then she looks at him apologetically and shrugs. "But he would've liked your dogs and as he always considered animals a reflection of their owners, there might have been some small hope for you."

"Some small hope is better than none," Jaime says dryly.

"I guess so," Brienne agrees with a doubtful nod, turning away to take a seat on the smaller of the two sofas. Jaime sits again, only to find himself spellbound by simply looking at her whilst she blows softly into her tea to cool it, deep in thought.

He watches Brienne slowly close in upon herself, physically as well as verbally, her legs lifting to curl around themselves in front of her upon the supple leather of the cushion. The hands holding her cup softly rise yet further, her back straightening and her forearms folding in to obscure as much of her body as she can manage. The thing that captures him, that makes Jaime utterly sad, is that he believes she is doing so without even thinking about it, that she has spent so much of her life hiding herself away. He watches her make herself something other, distant, and ends up distracted by the glare of the screen flickering on her large left shoulder, a pale and uncertain blue light on ribbed grey material. He doesn't want to see it. He wants to see _her_ , so he reaches for the remote and firmly turns the viewerscreen off.

The clunk of the device being returned to the table brings her back from wherever she's been and before Jaime can try to speak, Brienne looks at him evenly, openly, and sucks in a deep breath. "After my father died, some young men from other workshops started to seem as if they cared."

Her words are hurried, as is his bending forward to interrupt her. "You _don't_ have to do this, Brienne."

"I _do_ ," she replies, her gaze certain, before it falls to oaken table between them, her eyebrows drawn heavily. "They would drop by to keep me company. They brought me food and trinkets and said they were worried about me. One of them was nicer than the others and I considered...well, it doesn’t matter what I considered," she finishes brusquely, looking up at Jaime again. "Spanners opened my eyes to it."

Jaime ignores the rage suddenly scything through him. "Who’s Spanners?" he asks tightly.

"Spanners Goodwin," Brienne tells him. "My father’s best friend and chief mechanic. He came with us from Tarth and in the end, he taught me most of my trade." She pauses, the edge of lightness which crept into her voice with her talk of this Spanners proving short-lived when she continues. "He overheard some of those involved talking about the bet in the Dragon’s Head one night. I’d had no idea."

"You were grieving," Jaime tries to convince her.

Brienne doesn't accept it. "I was _naive_ ," she says bluntly, though Jaime can see all of her anger is being aimed in completely the wrong direction. At herself. But then the tension in her seems to lessen and her shoulders loosen slightly as she lets go of the past a bit. "Anyway, that was the end of that, barring some blackened eyes."

"Spanners hit them?"

"He did," she confirms, only to bring her cup up to rest against her lips and speak softly around it. "And then, later on, maybe _I_ did."

Jaime laughs. "I hope you did a thorough job of it."

Brienne lets her cup drop to rest on a knee, now openly smiling. "Well, after I lost my braces, I started going to a local boxing gym a few nights a week. So there might have been a broken nose or two. Not _mine_ , for a change."

"Good for you."

They grin at each other for long moments, but then Brienne flops herself back, nestling her head onto the firm back of the sofa with a weary sigh and a whisper of thin hair brushing over leather. "It didn’t help matters here, truth to tell."

Jaime waits, looking at the thick column of her throat fluttering and her jaw working as she appears to sift out her words. Eventually, she lifts her head again. "There's a man called Randall Tarly. He has a larger garage down near River Row and let's just say he isn’t a fan of women in our business. He trumpeted my...foolishness about and used it to take a few of our major contracts. I've long since suspected the idea of the bet was his in the first place." She taps at her knee with her free fingers, a nervous, unhappy beat that speaks of her sheer unhappiness. "Then winter really came, and I had to let people _go_." It is obvious that she still struggles with it now, though this winter is not new. "Even Spanners has gone back to Tarth on unpaid leave for a while. He still has family there. They're quite well off, so he doesn't mind, and he'll come back when it gets a bit warmer. He hates winter." She takes a sip from her cup, but perhaps finds it gone too cool, as she deposits it on the table and turns the handle away, abandoning it there. "Anyway, without him, I doubt we would still be here at all."

"He sounds like a good man, Brienne," Jaime says, taking one last drop from his cup, only to end up doing precisely what his unlikely host had with her own.

"He is," Brienne nods as he does so, only to look at him curiously and change the subject. "So what about you, Jaime? What did you like, when you were little?" Then she smiles at him wryly. "Septas? Horses?"

It would seem Brienne thinks she has shared enough tonight, and Jaime can only agree, grateful for her leaving his sister unmentioned and himself at ease as he answers, "I had a few. Horses, not septas."

Brienne pulls her legs up, closer in towards her, and sets her chin on top of her knees with the softness of a landing feather and no lack of incongruous, drought-like sarcasm. "Naturally."

Yet then a day Jaime has not thought of in many a year leaps to mind, the fog of decades lifting away for just a moment. "But when I was _very_ small, I liked penguins."

Brienne blinks at him three times before asking, "Penguins?"

"Yes, penguins. I don't know if you remember the old City Zoo." Between the Lion and King's gates, curling around the bottom of Visenya's Hill, it had been built after the third Essosi-Westerosi conflict a hundred years before, but Jaime only recalls sunshine and the softness of his mother's hand holding his.

"Yes," Brienne says, and the fleeting wisp of a memory is gone. "Though I haven't been back since the zoo was closed and that very enclosure was turned into that awful skating rink."

Jaime smiles and points at her leg, wondering just how bruised it is, under that soft layer of blue. "Clearly. So, for my fourth nameday I wanted a penguin. A few days before it, if I remember rightly, my mother took me to the zoo. She adopted a rescued one for me. It had scarring on one flipper, from a small propeller I think. I called it Mittens."

Brienne's shoulders start to shake. "You called an injured penguin _Mittens_?"

Jaime runs the side of his left hand back and forth over his right wrist. "The scar ran across about here on him. It looked like he was wearing a mitten." He grimaces at the badly concealed mountain of laughter sitting across from him. "I was _four_ , Brienne," he says, defensively. "Probably still three."

She spends a moment clasping her fingers over her mouth, only to peel them away, one at a time, nodding at him with a poor pretense of seriousness. "No, it's...I think it's sweet." Her lips then twitch as she tries not to laugh out loud.

Jaime stands and lifts their cups from the table. "It's been a long time since I've been called sweet. If ever."

"Clearly," Brienne smiles. Jaime can feel her gaze following him while he goes over to place the cups in the empty sink. The sound of stoneware hitting metal rings clear in the room, and Jaime turns back, leaning against the worktop as silence settles over them.

Briefly, he grasps at the marble surface, feeling the cool of it soaking into his fingertips as he watches his companion watching him. Her gaze is placidly amused, thoroughly sincere and in the end it drives him to say, "Brienne. About my sister-"

She shakes her head fervently before she even starts speaking. "You don't have to explain to me, Jaime. Though you can, if you wish. Just please, don't expect me to understand. I'm not sure I can."

He stalks back over to the sofa and slumps unceremoniously onto it. "I don't expect you to. How could I?" Then he lurches forward to lean his elbows on his knees, looking directly at Brienne. Uncertain of what he should say. Knowing that he will say it anyway. "It began after our mother died, though it was nothing much to begin with. Just the playing of children. Both of us. Not one over the other. Never anything like that, I promise you."

He gives Brienne time to think, needing some for it himself as the ugly truth threatens to flood from him, unchecked. Yet blue eyes move from wariness to mild comprehension sooner than he could've believed. "Mistakes made during grief are something I _can_ understand."

"Granted," Jaime says. "But ours grew. It kept growing over the years. It didn't stop. It felt like it never would."

"She was your world," Brienne whispers.

"Yes. But we could never marry. How could we be together?"

Whether Brienne is horrified at him or for him he cannot tell, but now she leans in too, her position close to a mirror of his own, her feet dropping to the floor, her features having settled into a semblance of shock. "You held on to it. You were always _faithful_ , weren't you?"

Jaime grunts at that in confirmation, though if there is any amusement in it, it is only at his own folly. "I did. I was."

"Idiot." She says it so quietly that she may not even know the thought has popped out of her until she sees him grin. For the barest moment, she appears apologetic, but then she changes tack and instead asks a forthright question. "Did you never read the papers, Jaime?"

"Not since Aerys." He wags his finger at the instant and blatant curiosity which lights her features. "Which really is a tale for another day. And even that isn't quite what you think."

Long legs shift again and Brienne pulls her feet around until they both rest to one side of her, pursing her lips as she considers what to say next. "So," she asks him, "why did it end?"

Jaime drops his head into his hands and simply laughs, only to end it peering up at her and stating the obvious. "Because I never read the papers."

"That makes a certain amount of sense. I suppose," she tells him, though then she smiles freely too. "You really _are_ an idiot."

"So my brother said to me, when he told me about Moon Boy the Illusionist."

"I've heard his show in Highgarden was very well received," Brienne offers, only to grimace at the inappropriateness of her swiftly blurted, but terribly polite comment.

Jaime doesn't mind. "So have I, oddly enough," he dryly replies.

Brienne sends him the tiniest of concilliatory shrugs and drops into a good minute of introspection. Jaime doesn't break it, just soaking in the waves of what he believes are revulsion and sympathy, as they dance back and forth through her. They can nearly be read as they struggle and beat their way across a manly jaw and a furrowed, heavy brow. Slowly, the battle eases and clear, blue eyes rise to him once more. "Your sister...Cersei," she says the name with difficulty, he notes, "has remarried, has she not?"

Now it is trying for Jaime. "Yes," he says, shortly. "She now lives in Dorne with Oberyn and Ellaria, his _other_ significant other."

Brienne's face, to her credit, only reddens a little as she takes in knowledge of yet another extremely unusual relationship. She frowns down at the floor, only to quickly look back up at him. "Is she happy, do you think?"

It is such a simple, honest question that it takes him off guard. It is one which, caught within his own longstanding and bitter pain, Jaime hasn't fully considered. "Do you know, I think she is? Robert was an utter bastard to her."

"Then it's not all bad," she asks uncertainly. "Is it?"

"No," Jaime replies, grateful at last, not only to have someone to share this with, but to have chosen that someone so well. "It isn't, Brienne. Thank you."

Brienne shakes her head in a small way. "It's nothing."

_It is not._

Jaime doesn't argue the matter though, somehow aware that even if Brienne has given more to him this evening than he could have ever hoped, she would not welcome his pointing it out. New information from both of them has thickened the air and it sits heavy between them. Stifling.

He stands. "I should probably go."

Jaime moves towards the hallway, but his attempt to leave this room, achingly filled as it is now with their secrets, is halted by Brienne. "Before you do, you should know I don't like strawberry Jelly Puppies." She raises a wary eyebrow at him. "They're too sweet."

"Then I will endeavour to eat them all, in the future," he tells her, only to swallow nervously, which he can hardly believe he is doing in the first place. "If we should meet again."

Brienne laces her fingers together in her lap and bounces them on her legs, but doesn't look away from him. In the end, she just stills and drops her head in silent affirmation. And Jaime breathes.

Yet he worries about what he has said. About what more he would say, if he stays here any longer. "Can I use your bathroom?"

Brienne smiles gently at him. "I don't recall withdrawing the invitation."

Despite her kindness, his legs can't quite carry him away fast enough. He damn near stumbles along the narrow corridor and before he knows it he is standing over white porcelain, his pissing done, his cock limp in one hand and his forehead in the other. Afraid.

_I have never even spoken to Tyrion of Cersei, for all of the drunken wisdom he's foisted onto me._

Jaime feels both lighter and heavier at the same time, the relief at finally having shared it with someone countered by the fear that everything will now go to all seven of the hells.

But then he thinks of Brienne and her obvious decency. The sweetness of her character, clothed differently as it is not just in her body, but hidden behind defenses she has needed for most of her life. And Jaime cannot believe for a moment that she would do him ill.

_If she wanted to, she would just tell me so._

He lets his fears fall away like autumnal leaves, tucks himself in, and washes his hands. Only then does Jaime take any note of the room he is in. And it stuns him. Within a half of a minute, he pulls the bathroom door open and gapes at the woman he finds leaning against the wall at the other end of the hallway, waiting for him. "You do know that this bathroom is better appointed than _both_ of my own? Probably put together?"

"I didn't," she says, completely soberly, her long legs spooling into life and eating up the distance between them. She stops by the coat-rack.

It only takes him a few steps to join her. "I'm serious, Brienne. That outlandish tub looks to be carved out of a single slab of marble and I think I counted five directional nozzles in the shower."

She hunches suddenly, seeming to find the skirting boards intensely interesting, and mumbles up at him, "There are six."

"I saw the inside of a couple of your kitchen cupboards when you opened them," he says, tipping her rapidly descending chin back up with a single forefinger, "and I'd swear I could only see three packets of dried noodles in them."

"You did, Jaime," she replies, batting his hand away with no force. "But I've told you we used to do much better here. The bathroom is my father's work, from years ago. He was a stickler for hygiene, but we work with oil and grease here. There is no better reason to invest in a good bathroom, surely?"

"Your father had good taste."

Brienne nods with certainty. "He did."

Jaime lifts his coat from its hook, throwing it on as he tries not to think of her in that bloody magnificent shower. But then another issue springs to mind. "Where _are_ our hounds, Brienne?"

She tilts her head and he follows her back towards the living area, though they stop before they get there. She points into the partially open door opposite the one he thinks leads into her own room and he opens it wider. On a double bed, their three dogs are sleeping, curled up into a mass of limbs and fur. "I think they were quite worn out," Brienne says. "Cat normally takes a nap, after our walks."

Jaime goes into the fairly small room and goes to the bed which, despite not being huge, dominates it, reaching out to tickle Honor's ears. "Come on, you two. Time to go home." They seem as reluctant to move as Cat had been, when getting out of his car a little earlier, but with some encouragement they drop to the floor and follow him back into the hallway.

He finds Brienne there, wiggling her feet into fluffy slippers, adorned with embroidered shields. "You're a fan of the Vaes Bloodriders?"

"No," Brienne says, "but I don't believe many are. They were on sale in the market. And they _fit_." It's a problem Jaime has had before himself, so he says nothing, just heading for the stairs with her in tow. When they get to the bottom of the stairwell and his own feet hit the concrete floor of the much cooler garage, he turns to her.

"You don't have to walk me all the way out, Brienne." The difference in temperature down here is marked by the goosebumps already covering her arms. "I don't want you to get cold again. The door and gate are self closing?"

"Yes."

"So," Jaime says, holding out his hand. "Friends?"

Brienne is completely still for some time, giving the offer some earnest thought, for which he can't blame her, before his hand is engulfed by hers with a firm shake. "Yes. Friends."

Then she sits, all adorably overlong legs, her ankles turned in so her feet fit on the last carpeted step below her, snagging at Cat's collar and rubbing her head to keep her close whilst Jaime makes his way to the exit with Honor and Glory. He pulls at the old, sturdy handle there. "Can I pick you up in the morning? To go to the park?"

"You can. But call me first. My number's on the invoice I gave you, if you still have it."

"I do. I will." Jaime strides into the winter chill, ushering out the dogs in front of him, only to have a final thought see him spinning back as the heavy outer door begins to swing shut. "Wait, six nozzles? You said there were six. In the shower."

"Oh! I-" Brienne stutters to a halt, one final clear, yet oddly panicked blue glance thrown his way. She looks determinedly down at Cat, her skin flushing as she replies. "You didn't look down, Jaime. There's one in the floor."

Jaime's mind goes blank and he only comes back to himself when the sheen of frost on the blue painted door rests against the tip of his nose. He strokes at his beard with low chuckle and addresses his loyal pets. "Hells, I think we should leave before I try to break back _in_."

Honor and Glory simply stand there, wagging their tails and uncharacteristically making no efforts to move when he heads across the crisp ice in the yard, as if they would be happy enough to remain here too.

"You guys really aren't helping," he tells them, while he waves them over to the gate and tries not to think of extraordinary showers, or tiny breasts that he has suddenly decided he finds quite captivating and massively long legs that may take him his whole life to properly measure. If only he is given the opportunity.

By the time he is secured in his driver's seat, Jaime is more than willing to let his head drop onto the steering wheel, appreciating too well that an outright declaration of friendship, though it was badly wanted, does not quite marry up with the images currently traipsing through his brain. He'll accept this friendship, even if it is all Brienne ever wants, because that in itself is precious enough. Yet Jaime can almost hear his brother laughing at him.

"I know, Tyrion," Jaime mutters to his absent sibling. "I know."

_I am not falling. I have fallen._


End file.
